I woke at 6:25am and opened the curtains to see the beginnings of the sunrise over the mountains. It was so gorgeous and a privilege to be tucked up in bed and to watch its peaking. I woke Phil so that he could capture it on camera. We breakfasted and packed up quickly after successful tramps into the beech forest. Funny camera shot of dancing!
Finishing the trip through Arthur’s Pass was amazing as a farmer and his wife, not to mention his 3 dogs and 5-600 sheep were on the road. I took oodles of photos and had tears of amazement and joy...

Sunday 9th May
On the flight to New Zealand. The pilot has just announced that it is 5 C there, which has come as a bit of a shock – we expected it to be a bit cooler there, but have not planned, or packed, for anything that cold (the most long trousers that any of us has is two pairs!). This is going to be interesting – and will certainly put a different perspective on teh planned water based activities in Queenstown!
We had a great last day in Fiji. The weather was overcast again, so the kids went into kids club and hade great time with...

The past couple of days have been pretty busy--after we left Queenstown we drove down and stayed at a holiday park about 40 km from Te Anau, the largest lake in the South Island. The next morning we drove out to Milford Sound, after it was repeatedly recommended to us by locals. The scenery on the drive there was spectacular, almost so I can't describe it. The mountains were sheer rock almost straight up, covered by rainforest in a lot of places, and it had been raining, so there were hundreds of little waterfalls. It felt like the Land...

It is really cold this morning, but we are up early and get some washing done before we head off. We leave Christchurch just before 10am and head South to Timaru. We have a good run down (it is approximately 2 hours). We find Garys dad Russell and Lea’s house and unhook the van and leave it on the roadway. The weather has turned bad, with rain, hail and sleet. There are warnings for snow possibly down to sea level. As Timaru is on the coast it is highly unlikely. All the signs are looking like it, but later in the day the weather moves away...